Another one bites the dust

Joseph Farah is founder, editor and chief executive officer of WND. He is the author or co-author of 13 books that have sold more than 5 million copies, including his latest, "The Gospel in Every Book of the Old Testament." Before launching WND as the first independent online news outlet in 1997, he served as editor in chief of major market dailies including the legendary Sacramento Union.

In fact, Proverbs 11:10 says: “When the wicked perish, there is shouting.”

I feel like shouting today. I feel like rejoicing. The world is a better place today because that cold, calculating monster is no longer in it. He is meeting his eternal judgment. And I hear it is crazy cold down there.

Why don’t I agree with the New York Times, Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter and others who are actually mourning this degenerate pervert?

Yasser Arafat was a murderer of Christians, Jews, Israelis and Americans – including U.S. diplomats, tourists, innocent women and children. Yasser Arafat was an unrepentant terrorist – the modern-day inventor of Arab terrorism, an inspiration for Osama bin Laden and others. Yasser Arafat was an exploiter of his own people, keeping them in squalor and perpetuating their hatreds while padding his own Swiss bank accounts.

I had my own experiences with Arafat as a Middle East correspondent. He tried to kill me, too, while I was visiting Lebanon once. But he missed with his rockets and artillery. I’m still here, but Arafat is dead.

Arafat had tried to take over Lebanon. But he was chased out by the Israelis. He directly or indirectly caused the deaths of about 40,000 Lebanese, however.

He killed tens of thousands, some in cold blood, others – like the U.S. diplomats in 1973 – through his gleeful orders.

Why should we mourn a monster like this? Why should we fly a flag at half-staff – unless we approve of his antics?

Do Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter and the New York Times understand that Arafat – their hero, their friend – was a Nazi sympathizer? Would the truth about that make any difference to them?

In an interview in 2002 published in Al Sharq al Awsat, a London Arabic daily, reprinted in the Palestinian daily Al Quds, Aug. 2, and translated by Palestinian Media Watch, Arafat called the Arab leader and Nazi ally, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, “our hero.” He drew an analogy between himself and al-Husseini who survived as a leader despite world pressure against him because of his Nazi ties.

“We are not Afghanistan,” said Arafat in the interview. “We are a mighty people. Were they able to replace our hero Hajj Amin al-Husseini? There were a number of attempts to get rid of Hajj Amin, whom they considered an ally of the Nazis. But even so, he lived in Cairo, and participated in the 1948 war, and I was one of his troops.”

Arafat seldom tells the truth, but, in this case, his facts were correct.

Hajj Amin al-Husseini was the grand mufti of Jerusalem leading up to World War II. He supported the Nazis. He met with Adolph Hitler. He was a strong proponent of the Nazi program for mass murder of the Jews.

In fact, Arafat’s hero became a German agent, and the British tried repeatedly to arrest him as a spy.

Perhaps the mufti’s “greatest achievement” was the recruitment of tens of thousands of Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania to the German SS. His Arab legions later participated in the massacres of thousands of partisan Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.

On March 1, 1944, Arafat’s hero was in Berlin making a dramatic radio broadcast: “Arabs! Rise as one and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion. This saves your honor.”

The Nazi mufti visited numerous death camps and encouraged Hitler to extend the “Final Solution” to the Jews of North Africa and Palestine. In fact, his only condition for recruiting the Arab legions in the Balkans was a promise from Hitler to wipe out the Jews of the Middle East after the war.

The grand mufti was not just Arafat’s “hero,” as he says. Arafat was, in fact, so close to al-Husseini that the young terrorist called him “uncle.” Arafat’s real name is Rahman Abdul Rauf el-Qudwa al-Husseini, though his actual blood relationship with al-Husseini is in question. His entire career was sponsored by the dreaded Nazi mufti. He was, indeed, Arafat’s mentor, his inspiration for 40 years of terror, murder, hatred and international duplicity.

Let this be Arafat’s final epitaph: He was a terrorist. He was a murderer. He was a liar. He was pro-Nazi scum.